The object of this invention is an accelerated method for reconstructing a three-dimensional image which is based on a frequency analysis.
Methods for reconstructing images by tomography involve the establishment of projections, measured by the detectors of a network, which are the sum of the property to be represented on the image along the rays crossing the object and ending up at the detector. In attenuation tomography, the total absorption of a ray emitted by an external source through the object to be represented is measured; in emission tomography, the object has been made emissive of a radiation, the projections of which represent sums along a respective collimation ray associated with each detector, for a determined measurement time. The invention is indistinctly applied to all these methods for establishing projections and is only related to their subsequent processing.
A linear equation system of a very large size expresses the total value, as measured at each projection ray, of the absorption or emission property to be represented as a function of the values that it assumes on the points of the object passing through this ray. Inversion of this system enables the value of the property to be calculated at each point of the object, and to rebuild the wanted image, and methods called algebraic methods have been devised for proceeding in this way. However, algebraic methods become very awkward when images with fine resolution are required, computation times being excessive, and that is why so-called analytical methods have been developed wherein the projections undergo digital processing called filtering, after which they are combined according to a so-called back projection method which provides the value of the wanted property at each point of the object according to the projections passing through this point. These methods are now popular, but they also require a large volume of computations which one would like to reduce. The invention is a means for meeting this wish.